Beyoncé

Beyoncé Used to Watch TV with a Snake Named Fendi, and Other Revelations About the Singer

As we mentioned this morning, Queen Bey is on the cover of Out magazine’s “Power” issue. For the accompanying feature, writer Aaron Hicklin was given full access to Beyoncé’s entertainment production company, Parkwood, but only limited access to Bey herself. And even though his communications with the Grammy winner were restricted to a few e-mails, the writer still managed to squeeze some colorful information out of Parkwood’s staff members about their boss. Among the most interesting tidbits:

Beyoncé belted out a smooth jazz song at the top of a pyramid in Egypt.

In Egypt, [visual director Ed Burke] and Beyoncé scaled a pyramid
together as the rest of their group gave up or fell back. “It smelled
like urine because there are no bathrooms up there,” he recalls. “She
looked like Mother Teresa, wearing this white dress and a head wrap,
and when we got to the top she sang Donny Hathaway’s ‘A Song for
You.’”

Beyoncé’s tour group is so large that it is divided into three sub-sections.

It is a Friday night in February in Glasgow, Scotland, and the wind is
whipping brutally around the corners of the Hilton, where team C of
Beyoncé’s tour group is staying (team B is in the more charming
Malmaison Hotel; the whereabouts of team A, which presumably includes
Beyoncé, are a closely guarded secret).

She recorded “XO” with a sinus infection.

“I recorded it in a few minutes just as a demo and decided to keep the vocals.”

She displays her many, many Grammys in her office.

Decorated like a boutique hotel—plush sectional sofas, hardwood
floors, an enormous contemporary chandelier—the most visible sign of
Beyoncé are the 17 Grammys that line one end of the conference room
and a cool portrait of a young Michael Jackson, her idol.

She has a cousin named Angie Beyince(!) who sounds amazing.

Today, she wears orange lipstick, works as Parkwood’s vice president of operations, and gives these kinds of quotes to reporters: “I refer to myself as a lioness. I’m a bad chick.” In the Destiny’s Child days, she worked as the groups’ “tour accountant, travel booker, media liaison, laundry washer.” “I don’t play,” she continues. “I went in there with all male promoters [during Destiny Child
tours], and I’d count that money out. The first day I did that they
were a dollar short. And I said, ‘I’m missing a dollar.’ They said,
‘Oh no, baby girl,’ everything to shrink me, to diminish me—‘Oh no,
sweetie pie, oh no, honey, no, no.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll count again.’ ”

Bey used to watch TV with a snake named Fendi.

[Angie Beyince] grew up
spending her summers with her cousins, Beyoncé and Solange. “They
loved Janet Jackson,” she tells me. “We’d talk all night and watch
Showtime at the Apollo and my snake, Fendi, would just be crawling
around. He’d sit on our heads while we watched TV.”